Warren S. and Myrtle E. Churchill were active and generous supporters of The University of Tulsa. Among other volunteer leadership roles, Warren served in 1938 as a founder and charter member of TU’s Quarterback Club, the forerunner of today’s Golden Hurricane Champions Fund. The couple also supported academic programs during their many years of friendship with the university. Myrtle even shared her love of music by gifting a rare and valuable musical instrument to TU’s School of Music. Warren passed away in 1970 at the age of 75, and Myrtle passed away in 1981 at the age of 82.
Warren was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1894. As a child, he moved with his family to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, where he became an American citizen. He then attended and graduated from The Maine Central Institute, an independent day and boarding school serving grades nine through twelve, in Pittsfield, Maine. Warren pursued his higher education at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and at the DeMerritt School of Languages in Boston, Massachusetts. He served overseas during World War I.
After the war, Warren moved to Tulsa and married local Tulsa girl Myrtle Enos. In 1919, he began his long career in the oil and gas industry at Roxana Oil Company. He worked in progressively responsible roles for Roxana over the next decade, eventually becoming the Assistant General Superintendent of the company.
Mr. Churchill founded his own oil and gas company, Arrow Drilling Company, in 1931. During his twenty-three years as president of Arrow Drilling, he expanded the Arrow operations to Dallas, where he and Mrs. Churchill lived from 1940 to 1953, and later to Canada, acquiring a Canadian affiliate, the Arrow Drilling Co. of Canada, Ltd. He sold Arrow Drilling in 1954 to an entity which later became the Keir and Cawder Arrow Drilling Co Ltd.
Throughout his career, Warren took on a number of important leadership roles within the oil and gas industry. In 1937, he was instrumental in founding the American Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors. He served on the board of this organization from its formation, becoming its president in 1949. He was a member of the Federal Oil Council, and he served at various times as a director of three additional trade groups: the National Petroleum Council, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the American Petroleum Institute.
The couple’s ties to TU ran deep. In addition to contributing to various TU athletics teams for many years, they also made a mark on TU’s School of Music. In 1975, Myrtle donated a rare violin bearing the label of Johann Wackerl of Mittenwald to the school. She requested that advanced students play this valuable violin at concerts and in other educational programs, a mandate that no doubt brought considerable satisfaction to TU’s upper-level music majors.
Through a significant estate gift after their passing, Warren and Myrtle established The Warren S. Churchill Petroleum Engineering Teaching Fellowship. This endowment funds a graduate teaching fellowship in the McDougall School of Petroleum Engineering within TU’s College of Engineering and Natural Sciences (now known as the College of Engineering and Computer Science). The goal of this endowment is to provide additional graduate research opportunities for students in order to benefit the petroleum industry. It is also designed to attract new faculty and to enable them to further hone their teaching and professional skills.
TU is grateful for the financial support of this philanthropic couple and for their caring legacy, which continues to promote excellence at the university.
